


the hardest part of moving on is waking up

by Chokopoppo



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24033781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: You are inside this body, and it is naked and healthy and grieving. Who is it? What has it lost?Everyone lives. That has consequences.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	the hardest part of moving on is waking up

**Author's Note:**

> After the amazing art by [Lowlighter](https://lowlighter.tumblr.com/post/190208962655/i-lost-my-mind) on Tumblr. The image stuck with me and wouldn't let me go, and this evening, I finally finished my first playthrough of BOTW and felt feelings about it. I kept coming back to this.

It’s all a haze, right at the beginning. No—it’s not a haze, it can’t be. Revali will call it a haze, and Urbosa has nothing in common with that pre-plucked dinner of an overgrown—no, no, getting angry won’t help anything. It isn’t Revali’s fault that Urbosa can’t start at the beginning. Getting angry won’t help—anything, won’t help anything. 

It’s important to start at the beginning. That’s the problem—the beginning is so distant, something gauzy and wet like fog rolling over the rain-slicked hills to the north. Ephemeral and tactile all at once. If she just closes her eyes

_open your eyes_

If she just opens her eyes, she’s there all over again, floating in lukewarm water. She wakes up like that. She wakes up, tears streaming down her face. She is—she is a thing, in a body, a body in a coffin, a coffin in a tomb. It’s not dark in here; the whole place glows pale blue, not the deep color of sapphires found in temples but something alien, stars reaching down to touch her face from heaven.

She stretches her arms out in front of herself. Dark skin. Long nails. Are those hers? Is this her body? It aches with something ancient and hungry, muscles lurching inside her. She is inside her—she is inside this. This body is naked. This body is healthy, and it hurts with grief just as alien as the color of the light.

“Steady,” a voice says, pure and clear, “it’s alright.”

Urbosa opens her mouth and tries to say, what is this, what did it lose, why does it hurt, but instead her voice comes out in a savage noise unbefitting of a king. Is that what this body is? Or is that what she is?

“It’s alright,” the voice repeats, and then, “can you sit up?”

Urbosa opens her mouth, she lifts her arms, the water around her splashes. Her mouth is open and she makes a noise again, she wants to ask them to help her, there is so _much_ pain inside her somewhere—

“Put her back down,” the voice says, “she needs more time. She isn’t ready. Look at her eye…”

Another noise, she tries to tell them to wait, the lights lower, and the voice is inside the coffin with her as everything goes dark and suffocating, _it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright_

Urbosa wakes up.

The shrine of resurrection spits her out, fully formed, naked as the day she was born. She knows what this place is called, and she knows her own name. For better or for worse, she wakes up, and starts to think.

The first thing she thinks is, if I don’t get some clothes, I’m going to kill somebody. That’s remedied easily when she looks around the room. A handy wooden chest, full to the brim of worn out (but still perfectly good) fabrics, and a pair of shoes at the very bottom. She doesn’t put those on at first—she’s still soaking wet, and it seems like a shame to ruin what looks like good leather—but she dresses herself until she’s comfortable in the cold. They aren’t the sort of clothes she normally likes to wear, but beggars can’t be choosers, and the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

The second thing she thinks, because she hears something moving around nearby, is if I want to kill somebody, I’d better get something to kill them with. This is considerably harder—there are no weapons inside the shrine, neither spears nor scimitars nor bow and arrow with which to strike down opponents. She _does_ find a broken mop with no mophead, which is to say, she finds a stick. It will have to do.

It is like this that she strides out into the dawn of a new day, wet feet patting against the tile, a stick in one hand and two shoes in the other, hackles raised, on her guard. She steps over the threshhold and she sees the world—there is so much, it is overwhelming in its grandeur and largesse, it is—

“You’re awake!” A young man cries at her shoulder, and with a cry, she strikes out at him with her stick. He goes _oof,_ and then he goes down.

“Woah,” says another voice, and Urbosa spins around, stick out, pointed like a spear (or, less flatteringly, like a pool cue) as she surveys her second potential attacker. A young woman, white haired and dressed in archaic fashions, sticks both her hands up in the air comically high. “Woooaaah. Woah! _Woah._ Easy, there.”

Urbosa’s teeth clench together in her mouth and she opens her mouth, to speak, a sense memory of screaming in deep dark water almost upon her—

“I’m not a horse,” she snarls, “whoareyou, _where_ is this place? What’s going, on?”

Okay, not _hugely_ poetic. Her voice can be strangled into words, but she doesn’t have control over it, not totally. It bucks and jumps like a wild animal against her tongue.

“I calls it like I sees it,” the woman says, “you’re fine, it seems like? Just a little rattled! This is the shrine of resurrection. It does—well, exactly what it says on the tin, you know what I mean? I meanifigu _redwhhhhhh_ it that, I guess we’re not th _eonesw_ ho and the queen says—“

The sound of her voice distorts in Urbosa’s ears. There’s too much of it, too much information. The light of the sun is blistering against the green of the grass—the wind against her clothing itches and writhes. Too much sound. Birds in the trees. Rustling leaves. Distant singing that almost almost almost sounds familiar. And the _talking,_ the words that don’t stop and twirl around Urbosa’s head. She feels dizzy. She’s going to throw up.

“Shhhhut up,” she manages to say, “you talk too much! Shut up!”

The girl—mercifully—stops, frowning. “Okay,” she says, “ouch, that’s, like—hey!” 

Urbosa doesn’t know what the _hey_ is for, and she doesn’t particularly care. She’s seen a footpath and is sprinting down it as quickly as she can, away from the woman who talks and the shrine. The dirt against her feet is blissfully simple, almost like hot sand gritting against her callused feet. Beyond her is a forest of trees, and beyond that, the decaying ruins of an old temple.

“Help,” the woman who talks is yelling, “she just ran off!”

There’s a sound of raised voices, of feet giving chase, and Urbosa curses. The shoes in her hand seemed a good idea at the time, but now they’re just cutting her dexterity in half. From behind her, coming up at her side, she sees another white-haired woman sprinting towards her, and throws the shoes directly at her. They make satisfying contact. Urbosa raises her stick, whoops with laughter, and, failing to see the tripwire in front of her, hits the ground with a painful thud.

Her head screams at her as she hits the ground. She’s dizzy, disoriented, her hearing muddled by many voices around her.

“Someone go get the queen—“

“Why did she run? Daruk didn’t run!”

“Hurgh,” Urbosa says, trying to lift her head off the ground. Her arms sting where she fell on them. “Whatshappening…”

“The queen’s coming, and boy, are we in trouble.”

“Like it’s our fault Gerudos are total—“

“Don’t finish that sentence! This isn’t playtime! She’s gonna get seriously mad.”

“Daruk didn’t run. Why did she run? She didn’t have to do that!”

“Where’d she get the stick?”

Urbosa tries to roll over, and succeeds in getting on her stomach. “I’m gonna throw up,” she mutters. “Where’s my stick? I like the stick.”

“Great Hylia, she’s a mess.”

“Go on, man! Help her up! You want the queen to see her like this?”

_“You_ help her. She already hit me once.”

And then there is a voice, so radiant, so self-assured, pristine and purified that Urbosa is sure, now, that she’s unconscious and dreaming. It splits through the bickering crowds, which fall silent like partygoers when a spoon strikes glass. “Please,” it says, “where is Lady Urbosa? Where is my friend?”

It’s the same voice from Urbosa’s darkened half-dead memory, the only thing left inside her. With effort, she forces her head up from the ground, and looks upon divine beauty. She looks up and

she r e c a l l s 

There they are, on the bright sand, watching the shadows slowly wash over the walls of a town they both know. Urbosa knows it well, its glimmering jewels and worn-down sandstone soft under her hands. None of that interests her—she is only compelled by the smile on her friend’s face, and the gigging, cooing bundle in her arms.

“She’s beautiful,” Urbosa says. “You’re lucky, Zona. You got a girl on your very first try.”

“Hopefully she’ll be healthy,” Zona says. Her hair is almost luminous in this dark. Blonde like moonlight. “Rhoam’s family vetted me extensively. I’ve never known I had so many aunts and uncles whose health might be ‘important’.” She looks up at Urbosa, her eyes blue. “Are you angry with me?”

“Angry?”

“That I took on this task,” she says, “that I married him.”

“That you’re making a sacrifice for the better of Hyrule?” Urbosa asks. “No, I’m not angry. That you married Rhoam?” She twitches her mouth. “A little.”

“This kingdom needs a princess, you know,” Zona says. “The calamity is coming. Hylia needs a vessel.”

“I know,” Urbosa says. “I know. I just wish it hadn’t been you.”

Zona smiles—not at Urbosa, but down at the bundle in her arms. “Well,” she says. “I’m happy, after all, with my little bird.”

Urbosa leans over the bundle, eyes fluttering—it f a d e s 

There, before her, swathed in blue and sprinting towards her on the ground, is her friend. She looks up and cries out. “Zona,” she says, reaching forward, “help me! These lunatics are trying to kill me!”

“We didn’t do anything,” says a voice from somewhere. It sounds a little offended. “She hit me with a stick for standing around.”

Zona’s face startles. “Urbosa,” she says, her voice fainter in manner than Urbosa remembers it, “you are not well. But you are alive! You do not know how great a salve that is to me. Give me your arm.” She falls to her knees and begins to pull Urbosa upwards, dragging her arm over her slim little shoulders.

“What’s happening to me?” Urbosa asks. “What happened to me, Zona? Where am I?”

“You’ve made a mistake,” Zona says, her face now definitely pained, “I am not Zona.”

“What?” Urbosa says. She frowns. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve known you since—“ she breaks off, frowns. “I’ve known you since such a time as cannot be said.” 

“Since I was a baby,” Zona says, eyes beginning to prickle with tears. “Do you really not remember me at all?”

Urbosa stares at her. “You’re the only thing I do remember,” she says.

Zona looks at her. She bursts into tears.

“I am not my mother,” she says, miserably, “I am not Zona! I am your Zelda! I am your friend!”

Urbosa stares at the weeping queen who is not her Zona, and now begins to see through the cracks. The eyes are not the right blue, the hair not the right white. She seems about the right age—twenty-eight, maybe, or just twenty-five with the weight of the world on her shoulders—but the rest of the details fall apart under scrutiny. Except—

“Zelda is a baby,” Urbosa says helplessly. “I held her in my arms. I remember the weight of her. This cannot be true.”

“Urbosa,” the queen says, and throws her arms around her. Urbosa feels the bow of her spine and the skinny boning of her corsetry under her hands, familiar and alien, and feels more alone than she thinks she has ever been.

“What has happened?” She asks. “What are we mourning?”

One of the white-haired warriors steps forward. “Get up out of the dirt,” she says, not unkindly. “We’ll show you.”


End file.
